The metro is only front and center, as you put it, if you leave it in default mode. It is very easy (2 minutes or less) to change the default to boot to desktop so it looks like Win 7. Incidentally, I now prefer the metro vs the desktop screen 90% of the time. One keystroke to swap back and forth...how easy is that. Fools like you that only complain make it difficult for yourself, and misinform those not using Win 8 yet, or using it incorrectly for their needs. If you are a consumer I give you some forgiveness, but if you are an IT staffer you are an embarrassment.

Win8.1 remains a flop on desktops because the Metro UI is still front and center, even when booting straight to the desktop. In order to get to anything that used to be in a well-organized and quickly accessed start menu one has to continue to hassle with Metro that looks like a mix between Bloomberg TV and an explosion in a crayon factory while giving zero means of hierarchical organization. Grouping the tiles is no help because there will still be only one level and given how much space they take up even when resized (all extra steps that are not necessary with a real menu) it will only be a matter of time until you need to swipe left and right to get to what you need. That UI just sucks for desktop. The one OS for everything strategy is the dumbest idea Microsoft ever cooked up and they had plenty of dumb ideas.The only chance for 8.1 is that it can still be customized using a large number of 3rd party tools that force 8.1 into the OS that it should be right out of the box.

I don't have experience yet with both Win 7 and Win 8 on the same machine, but I actually find Win 8.1 on my Surface Pro more satisfying than Windows 7 on my Lenovo ThinkPad, which is less than two years old. Yes, Win 8.1 still makes some things harder than they should be, but it runs much snappier than Win 7 in my opinion, crashes far less, lets me throw more at it at once in the desktop, etc. Some of the Win 8.1 advantage I'm seeing is owed to the Surface Pro's superior hardware, but some is also due to Win 8.1 being better in some ways.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.